Hollywood “stars” may be enlisted to pressure owner Jeff Bezos not to cut Washington Post staff

Journalists at The Washington Post are considering enlisting two of Hollywood’s “biggest stars in a coordinated effort to persuade the paper’s billionaire owner not to slash jobs” at The Post, reports a Daily Beast post on Yahoo News.

According to the post: “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013 from the storied Graham family, promising to uphold the journalistic values that helped the Post break the Watergate scandal and win dozens of Pulitzer Prizes.

“But now, reports indicate that roughly 300 staff members could lose their jobs, including many overseas employees and potentially the entire sports desk, representing some of the deepest cuts the paper has ever faced.

“As Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, mingled with Hollywood’s elite at Paris Fashion Week—attending shows for Schiaparelli and Dior—Post staffers were quietly plotting ways to reach their seemingly distracted owner.”

The post states that messages obtained by Status reveal “discussions ranging from direct appeals to enlisting celebrity allies, including Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep—who famously portrayed Post leaders Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham in the 2017 film The Post. Hanks has also previously promoted the newspaper in a Super Bowl advertisement.

“It is unclear whether Hanks or Streep were contacted directly,”